| Episode number | MB16 (Part 16 of 42) |
|---|---|
| Original air date | March 30, 1993 |
| Broadcast | Hour of the Time, WWCR shortwave |
| Chapter title | Sun Worship |
| Primary text read on air | A. Ralph Epperson, The New World Order (1990) |
| Listen | Stream the series on archive.org |
Episode Summary
Episode 16 aired on March 30, 1993, three weeks after the preceding broadcast, a gap Cooper does not explain. It opens with the sounds of a bugle playing Reveille, two warning alarms, weapons fire, and then Taps, after which Cooper declares that the United States is already in a shooting war against its own people. The government siege at Waco, Texas, where federal agents surrounded the Branch Davidian compound throughout that month, provides the urgent context. Cooper calls the Davidians a brave group of men and women and children fighting for their Creator-endowed rights who have committed no crimes, and warns that if the pattern continues the country will see civil war. The extended opening is the most overtly political statement in the series to that point.
Once Cooper moves to the broadcast’s main subject, he resumes reading from A. Ralph Epperson’s The New World Order, picking up the serpent thread introduced in episode 15 and carrying it forward into a full treatment of solar religion. The organizing argument, assembled from quotations by Manly P. Hall, Albert Pike, Albert Mackey, Carl Claudy, Rex Hutchins, Kenneth MacKenzie, and others, is that sun worship is the oldest and most widespread religion in human history, that the Ancient Mysteries used solar ritual as a public vehicle for a concealed Luciferian theology, and that Freemasonry has preserved those solar rites intact in its initiation ceremonies while hiding their true meaning from ordinary members.
The episode’s central documentary passage is a block of quotations from Pike’s Morals and Dogma cataloguing the forms the sun deity took across civilizations: Brahma, Amun, Osiris, Bel, Adonis, Mithras, Apollo, and the Hindu Krishna. The sun, Pike wrote, became the basis of all the religions of antiquity, and is the hieroglyphical sign of Truth because it is the source of light. Cooper presents this as direct evidence that the light Freemasonry seeks is the light of the same solar deity rather than any Christian God. Mackey’s Encyclopedia of Freemasonry confirms that the sun is present in Masonic symbolism as a symbol of sovereign authority, and his Manual of the Lodge states explicitly that the rite of circumambulation refers to the doctrine of sun worship, specifically to what he calls Sabaism, the worship of the sun, moon, and stars practiced in Persia, Chaldea, and India. Cooper allows himself an audible laugh when he reaches Mackey’s careful distinction between sun with a small s, which Masons do not worship, and Sun with a capital S, which they do.
Epperson’s argument, which Cooper reads at length, traces the social function of solar ritual: a priestly class that could predict the sun’s movements used that knowledge to maintain power over populations who believed the sun’s return depended on priestly intercession. The class could even predict eclipses and threaten to withhold their prayers unless tribute was paid. When the true object of worship, Lucifer, could not be openly acknowledged, the sun served as a publicly acceptable substitute. Cooper underlines the political implication, that the adepts who run the Mystery Schools have always used religion as a mechanism of social control, and that this is the secret at the heart of the New World Order project.
The episode’s second half surveys solar symbolism across the Scottish Rite degree system. Hutchins explains that the 25th degree Knight of the Brazen Serpent and the 28th degree Knight of the Sun both embed solar titles. The 9th degree uses nine yellow wax candles, yellow being representative of the sun and hence knowledge. In the 10th degree three sets of five yellow lights represent the Deity. The Worshipful Master of any lodge sits in the East to represent the rising sun; the Senior Warden in the West represents it at setting; the Junior Warden at the south represents it at meridian. Cooper quotes six Masonic writers in sequence confirming that the North is deliberately excluded from all lodge ritual because the biblical God sits in the North and Lucifer hopes one day to seize that throne. Elizabeth Clare Prophet of the New Age movement and Adolf Hitler’s Thule Society connection to solar symbolism round out the survey before Cooper closes with Old Testament passages from Ezekiel and Deuteronomy condemning sun worship as an abomination. A funeral prayer offered in a Christian church addressing the Sun as Father, Cooper concludes, shows that solar worship has penetrated even mainstream Christianity without the worshipers realizing it.
Key Claims Made in This Episode
Documented from the broadcast. The site records these claims; it does not endorse them. Dated claims also appear in the series timeline.
- Cooper claims the Branch Davidians at Waco have committed no crimes and are fighting for their Creator-endowed rights, and that if the government’s pattern continues the United States will see civil war.
- Cooper claims sun worship is the oldest and most widespread religion in human history, citing Albert Pike’s statement that worship of the sun became the basis of all the religions of antiquity.
- Cooper claims the Masonic rite of circumambulation is, by the explicit admission of multiple Masonic writers including Mackey and Pike, a survival of ancient Sabaism, the worship of the sun, moon, and stars practiced in Persia, Chaldea, and India.
- Cooper claims Mackey’s distinction between sun with a small s, which Masons deny worshiping, and Sun with a capital S, which appears throughout Masonic literature, reveals the concealed solar theology through a deliberate wordplay in the published literature.
- Cooper claims a priestly class in antiquity used astronomical knowledge, including the ability to predict eclipses, to maintain political and economic power over populations who believed the sun’s return depended on priestly prayer.
- Cooper claims the sun deity of the Ancient Mysteries was in reality Lucifer, and that the mystery religion adopted solar symbolism as a publicly acceptable cover for this hidden theological claim.
- Cooper claims the Scottish Rite degree system embeds solar worship throughout its structure, including the 9th and 10th degrees with yellow candles representing the Deity, and the 25th and 28th degrees whose titles, Knight of the Brazen Serpent and Knight of the Sun, openly name the symbols.
- Cooper claims the North is excluded from all Masonic ritual because, according to Isaiah chapter 14, God sits in the North and Lucifer covets that throne, meaning the place of darkness for Masons is the seat of the biblical God.
- Cooper claims Adolf Hitler was a sun worshiper who joined the Thule Society early in his life, and that Nazi cosmology placed the sun at the center as the sacred symbol of the Aryan race in opposition to the lunar symbolism attributed to Semitic peoples.
- Cooper claims the serpent symbol of the Masonic lodge represents Lucifer, citing Hall’s identification of the serpent as the symbol of wisdom and the title Serpent Kings as the proper name of the ancient founders of the Mystery Schools.
Primary Sources Cited in This Episode
| Source | Status | Where to find it |
|---|---|---|
| A. Ralph Epperson, The New World Order (1990) | Not public domain; quoted only | Main text for this episode; see the sources hub |
| Albert Pike, Morals and Dogma (1871) | Public domain | Scans on archive.org |
| Albert G. Mackey, Encyclopedia of Freemasonry (1873) | Public domain | Scans on archive.org |
| Albert G. Mackey, Manual of the Lodge (1862) | Public domain | Scans on archive.org |
| Manly P. Hall, The Secret Teachings of All Ages (1928) | Copyright status uncertain; quoted via Epperson | Search archive.org |
| Kenneth MacKenzie, The Royal Masonic Cyclopaedia (1877) | Public domain | Scans on archive.org |
| Alexander Hislop, The Two Babylons (1853) | Public domain | Scans on archive.org |
| Michel Bertrand and Jean Angelini, The Occult and the Third Reich (French original, 1978) | Not public domain; quoted only | English translation available; see sources hub |
| Isaiah 14:12-14 and Ezekiel 8:15-16 (Old Testament) | Public domain (King James Version, 1611) | Search archive.org |
Notable Quotes
One can understand what Mr. Mackey meant: the Masons do not worship the sun, they worship the Sun. With a capital S. He was telling the truth, but concealing it in symbolic language.
Cooper, MB16, March 30, 1993
All the time you thought religion was something stupid and didn’t have anything to do with overall world events, but you’re wrong. It has everything to do with everything, whether you believe it or not.
Cooper, MB16, March 30, 1993
Historians’ View
Albert Pike’s extensive use of solar imagery in Morals and Dogma is well documented, but historians of religion note that solar metaphors were ubiquitous in nineteenth-century comparative religion and do not indicate literal sun worship. The equation of the Masonic blazing star, the sun, and Lucifer is an interpretive chain that Pike scholars dispute: Pike uses Lucifer in its Latin sense of light-bearer or morning star as a rhetorical figure, not as a name for Satan. The claim that Hitler was a devoted member of the Thule Society is contested; most historians who have studied the period identify the Thule Society as a patron of the early Nazi movement rather than a direct organizational home for Hitler, and the relationship is more complex than Cooper’s reading of Bertrand and Angelini suggests. The Branch Davidian standoff at Waco ended in a fire and the deaths of seventy-six people on April 19, 1993, three weeks after this broadcast. Government investigations and subsequent court proceedings found that the Davidians fired first during the February 28 raid; Cooper’s characterization of them as innocent is a contested position. We record these claims as broadcast; we do not endorse them.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Mystery Babylon episode 16 about?
Episode 16 opens with a declaration that the Waco siege is a government war against the American people, then spends most of the hour on sun worship as the concealed theological core of Freemasonry and the Ancient Mysteries. Cooper reads extensively from A. Ralph Epperson’s The New World Order, citing Pike, Mackey, Hall, and others to argue that Masonic solar ritual is a surviving form of the oldest Luciferian religion. The Mystery Schools hub and Freemasonry hub cover related episodes.
Why is there a three-week gap between episodes 15 and 16?
The manifest lists episode 15 as airing March 10, 1993, and episode 16 on March 30, 1993. Cooper does not explain the gap on air. His March 15 San Diego lecture, which he promoted heavily in episodes 13 through 15, likely displaced broadcast time during that period.
What does Cooper say about Waco in episode 16?
Cooper opens the broadcast with the recorded sounds of battle and states the country is already in a shooting war against its citizens, comparing the Waco siege to the earlier Ruby Ridge standoff involving Randy Weaver. He calls the Branch Davidians innocent and predicts civil war if the government’s pattern continues. The Waco compound burned on April 19, 1993, nineteen days after this broadcast.
Where can I listen to episode 16?
The complete series audio is preserved at the archive.org Mystery Babylon collection. We never host the audio. For the series in context, see Who was William Cooper?
Continue the Series
- Previous: MB15: Quotes by Freemasons
- Next: MB17: Bibliography
- Topic hubs: Mystery Schools and Freemasonry
- Every dated claim in the series: Mystery Babylon timeline
- Books cited: sources and bibliography
- Full index: Mystery Babylon Complete Episode Guide
